Tuesday, May 30, 2017

An Alternative History Novel Primer

my article on alternative history novels from the Guardian. I'm not attempting to be comprehensive here, it's more of a trawl through some of my favourites......

With Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Man In The High Castle on Amazon and SS GB on the BBC we can safely say that the alternative history genre is hotter than ever. The Man In The High Castle was not the
first alternative history novel, nor even the first Nazis-win-the-war novel but
it is still probably the most influential book in the genre. Anyone who likes
historical fiction should be able to enjoy good counter-factual scenarios. It’s
fun imagining how things could have been otherwise. As Ray Bradbury demonstrated in ‘A Sound of Thunder’, one tiny change in the past could
have momentous consequences in the future. A “Butterfly Moment” (from the so
called butterfly-effect) is the point from which our timeline diverges from the
AH timeline. Structuralist historians tend to discount such moments but clearly
if Franz Ferdinand’s driver had driven straight on instead of turning right the
entire history of the twentieth century would have been different.

Of course the most successful AH novels are good novels per se with interesting well rounded characters and a plot that moves. Some
writers such as Harry Turtledove, SM Sterling, Jasper Fforde and Ken Flint have
spent nearly their entire careers writing alternative histories, others such as
Kingsley Amis, Iain Banks, Stephen Fry, Stephen King, Kim Stanley Robinson and
Philip Roth have merely dabbled in the genre. Wikipedia
has compiled a rather daunting list of alternative history novels, here but
if that’s too much to contemplate you could do worse than try some of the
following:

The first real
AH best seller was L Sprague De Camp’s 1939 novel Lest Darkness Fall in which a modern time traveller attempts to
prevent the collapse of the Western Roman Empire by introducing steam engines,
pencils, double entry book keeping and other exciting innovations.

World War 2 and
its aftermath really got the AH genre going in earnest. Spawning many
copycats/homages such as Fatherland, SS-GB, The Plot Against America, The
Yiddish Policemen’s Union, etc. The
Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick is still the best
what-if-the-Axis-had-won novel. The butterfly moment was the successful assassination
of Franklin Roosevelt in 1934. Set in the early 1960’s the victorious Germans
and Japanese have divided North America between them. Juliana Frink, a judo
instructor, discovers that there is a resistance movement to the Axis which has
been inspired by a novelist called Hawthorne
Abendsen. Abendsen, with the help of the Chinese book of prophecy, the I Ching, has written an alternative history novel called ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’ set
in a world in which the Nazis lost
the war. Subtle, menacing and utterly brilliant this is Philip K Dick’s
masterpiece. In a nice touch of crazy Dick believed that he had only dictated
the novel which had really been written by the I Ching to prove the existence of other Earths.

Directly
inspired by Dick’s novel, The Alteration
by Kingsley Amis, takes place in a 1970’s England where the Reformation never
happened and where the all powerful Catholic Church is in a cold war with the
Ottoman Empire. A talented boy chorister is forced to become a castrato to
preserve his beautiful voice, but in so doing his gift as a composer is lost.
(Amis following Nietzsche believed that sex lay behind all great art.) The fragmented and weak
resistance to the church militant is motivated by a novel called ‘The Man In
The High Castle’ authored by a certain Philip K Dick who dares to imagine a
world in which the Reformation triumphed. Look out for odd cameos from Harold
Wilson, Michael Foot and Tony Benn in this neglected tour de force.

The Alteration
incorporates some elements of the steam-punk genre, one of the most
entertaining of the AH sub-genres. The who-invented-steam-punk debate is a
surprisingly vitriolic one that I shall neatly sidestep here, instead I’ll
briefly draw your attention to some of the best steam-punk authors. Michael
Moorcock and K W Jeter really got things going in the late 1970’s and by 1990 William
Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s wonderful The
Difference Engine saw steam-punk reach its maturity with a novel about the
brilliant Ada Lovelace (Byron’s daughter), Charles Babbage and a mechanical computer
that achieves sentience Terminator
style. Other great books in this oeuvre are Leviathan
by Scott Westerfield, Boneshaker by
Cherie Priest, Mark Hodder’s The Strange
Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack (which contains avery clever butterfly moment) and Neal
Stephenson’s fabulously detailed Baroque
Cycle.

I’m not sure
that books that contain magic really count as AH novels as the butterfly moment
is somewhat ill-defined, however if you want to stretch a point Susanna
Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr
Norrell and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series could be seen as alternative
histories of the Napoleonic Wars and Britain in the 1990s/early 2000’s
respectively. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August the very impressive debut novel by Claire North is an interesting spin on butterfly-wing tinkering over multiple lives within the same time-line.

What about some
big really big canvas AH novels? Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt takes place in a Europe that has been utterly
devastated by the Black Death and is being repopulated by Muslims from the south
and Chinese from the west. The world gets divided up between China and Islam
and a dazzlingly imagined alternative Middle Ages is the result. West of Eden by Harry Harrison takes
alternative history as far back as anyone ever has attempted, imaging what
would have happened if the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs at Chicxulub and of course Philip Pullman's universe keeps expanding with his new Book of Dust... Anyway, I hope that you
have enjoyed this little run through the AH genre and that I’ve given you some
ideas for future reading...

About Me

twitter

More about me

I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University I emigrated to New York City where I lived in Harlem for seven years working in bars, bookstores, building sites and finally the basement stacks of the Columbia University Medical School Library in Washington Heights. In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of the year. In 2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with my wife and kids and started writing full time.

I'm probably best known for my Sean Duffy books. The first Sean Duffy novel, The Cold Cold Ground, won the 2013 Spinetingler Award and was picked as one of the best crime novels of the year by The Times.

The second Sean Duffy novel, I Hear The Sirens In The Street, won the 2014 Barry Award.

In The Morning I'll Be Gone (Sean Duffy #3) won the 2014 Ned Kelly Award.

Gun Street Girl (Duffy #4) was shortlisted for the 2016 Edgar Award, the 2015 Ned Kelly Award, The 2016 Anthony Award and was picked as one of the best books of 2015 by The Boston Globe and by The Irish Times.

All Hail McKinty!

"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland he would have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Times

"Hardboiled charm, evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one of our greatest crime fiction writers."

---The Guardian

"A literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Irish Times

"McKinty is a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips."

---The Sunday Independent

"Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Glasgow Herald

"McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."

---Kirkus Reviews

"McKinty's literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation's leading talents."

---Publishers Weekly

"McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seemless. He writes with a wonderful and wonderfully humorous flair for language raising his work above most crime genre offerings and bumping it right up against literature."

---The San Francisco Chronicle

"The first of McKinty's Forsythe novels, "Dead I Well May Be," was intense, focused and entirely brilliant. This one is looser-limbed, funnier...so, I imagine, is the middle book, "The Dead Yard," which I haven't read but which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the 12 best novels of 2006, along with works by Peter Abrahams, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy and George Pelecanos."

---The Washington Post

"McKinty, who grew up in Northern Ireland, has an ear for language and a taste for violence, and he serves up a terrifically gory, swiftly paced thriller."

---The Miami Herald

"There's nothing like an Irish tough guy. And we're not talking about Gentleman Gerry Cooney here. No, we mean the new breed of bare-knuckle Irish writers like Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen and John Connolly who are bringing fresh life to the crime fiction genre."

---The Philadelphia Inquirer

"McKinty's writing is dark and witty with gritty realism, spot on dialogue, and fascinating characters."

---The Chicago Sun-Times

"If you like your noir staples such as beautiful women, betrayal, murder, mixed with a heavy dose of blood, crunched bones, body parts flying around served up with some throwaway humour, you need look no further, McKinty delivers all of this with the added bonus that the writing is pitch perfect."

"This is a terrific read. McKinty gives us a strong non stop story with attractive characters and fine writing."

---The Morning Star

"[McKinty] draws us close and relates a fantastic tale of murder and revenge in low, wry tones, as if from the next barstool...he drops out of conversational mode to throw in a few breathtaking fever-dream sequences for flavor. And then he springs an ending so right and satisfying it leaves us numb with delight and ready to pop for another round. Start the cliche machine: This is a profoundly satisfying book from a major new talent and one of the best crime fiction debuts of the year."

---Booklist

"The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller: betrayal, money and murder, but seen through with a panache and political awareness that give McKinty a keen edge over his rivals."

---The Big Issue

"A darkly humorous cross between a hard-boiled mystery and a Beat novel."

---The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty's talent will swiftly drag you away. Let's hope the author does not slow down anytime soon."

---The Irish Examiner

"A virtual carnival of slaughter."

---The Wall Street Journal

"McKinty has once again harnassed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge another terrific novel."

"McKinty writes with the soul of a poet; his prose dances off the pages with Old World grace and haunting intensity. It's crime fiction on the level of Michael Connolly with the conviction of James Hall."

---The Jackson Clarion-Ledger

"The Bloomsday Dead is the explosive final installment in a trilogy of kinetic thrillers."

---The New York Times

"McKinty's Dead Trilogy has been praised by critics, who call it "intense," "masterful" and "loaded with action." If your reading pleasure leans toward thrillers offering suspense, close calls, wry wit, sharp dialogue, local color and sudden mayhem, you wont do better."